Corporal Jacques of the Foreign Legion

The first rays of the morning sun were stealing up the palm-bordered roads towards Sidi-bel-Abbès, above whose ramparts the minaret of the great mosque blazed white in the sky. Eighty miles from Oran on the coast, and the headquarters of the Foreign Legion, Sidi-bel-Abbès is surely one of the strangest cities on earth. It was built by the Foreign Legion, it is swept and garnished by the Foreign Legion, it is held against the Arabs by the Foreign Legion. At night the electric lights round the bandstand of the Foreign Legion on the Place Sadi Carnot blaze against the Algerian stars, whilst the Muezzins on the balconies of the minarets keep watch over Islam and their voices send north, south, east and west the cry that was old in the time of Sindbad the Sailor! All' il AllahGod is great. But the marvel of Sidi-bel-Abbès is not the fact that here Edison and Strauss face Mahommed in the form of his priests, nor the flower gardens blooming on the face of the desert, nor the roads along which the Arabs stalk and the automobiles dash. The marvel of Sidi-bel-Abbès lies in the Legion. When France found herself faced with the problem of Algeria, that is to say, the problem of infinite wastes of rock and sand inhabited by a foe mobile and ungraspable as the desert wind, she formed the Legion. She called to the wastrels, the criminals, the despairing and the impoverished of every country and every cityand they came. Men of genius, street sweepers, artists, doctors, engineersit would be difficult to touch a profession, a race or a grade of intellect not to be found in the Legion. General de Négrier said that the Legion could do anythingfrom the building of a bridge, to the writing of an opera, to the painting of a pictureall the genius that civilization has turned away from its doors is here at commandfor a halfpenny a day. The sun had touched the upper border of the huge blank eastern wall of the Legion's barracks and it was still a few minutes before réveillé, when in room Number 6 of the tenth company the garde-chambre for the day slipped from his bed, stretched and yawned noiselessly, and glanced round him. The room was like the ward of a hospital, and the likeness was made no less striking by the card above each of the twenty beds, a white card setting out each man's name and number.

Dettagli